Dirty Business
by lotuskasumi
Summary: Ms. Oswald is hired to kill a man called the Doctor, who is out to take her life. The Doctor is told a similar story, just in reverse. (From a prompt by randomthunk. Professional killers AU. (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara)
1. Chapter 1

"The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury." - Marcus Aurelius

* * *

"I've been called a lot worse by men who meant a lot more – so you'll forgive me if I'm not exactly moved to tears by your insult."

"Then you are mistaken, for it was no insult – merely an observation," the man said, but he was smiling at Clara, and worse he was smiling widely, proudly, without showing his teeth.

Clara hated smiles without teeth. _Only liars do that. _She couldn't stand liars. The truth, however pure, unvarnished, and ugly was always preferable to a pretty, well-painted, expertly decorated lie.

Clara stared in silence across the dark oak desk at the man. He brought his hands up and locked the fingers together, resting his elbows on the desk so that they creased the edge of several papers laid out there. She kept her hands resting comfortably on her lap, the fingers slightly bent, one hand folded over the other. His hands were bare, the knuckles dark with hair with more hints at the edges of his wrists, where the sleeves of his suit pulled back from being caught at the elbow. Her own hands were covered, as she preferred them to be at all times apart from the bathing ones, in a pair of slender black gloves. They were thin enough appear like a second skin but tapered at the tips, the way fingers never were naturally.

For a brief moment, Clara lowered her eyes to her fingers as a thought strayed across her mind. _What could he possibly gain by lying to me_? she wondered, before answering herself in the silence that continued on, as did their matched, empty stares. _Because he needs me to do something, and he doesn't like to need anyone. _That would certainly be enough to make anyone bitter as long as they were of the domineering, manipulative, control-freak variety. Clara had dealt with those before. She'd been accused of being one more than once, but could never take much insult at the comments. She wasn't sure if she would put herself into such a label as any of those offered, but she was notoriously terrible at giving herself any kind of name beyond the one appointed to her at birth. It's why she was so poor at self-introductions. _Thank God I don't have to do those anymore. _Most people who talked to Clara these days didn't even want to know her name. _Ms. Oswald _was usually how they addressed her if they had to at all, and only a few had laughed when she added, _"But my other preferred name is Boss."_ Most turned bright red and clammy if she started to ask for their own, before they stammered out an obvious alias. Clara liked to cross reference them with television characters or the names of actors in the recent gossip column. The names were never very inventive.

_Except for his, _she thought, glancing up at the man behind the desk. He had angled the chair to the side, allowing him to glance out the window at the view of another long line of tall, thin, dark buildings with hundreds of windows just like his own. But Clara could feel that his attention hadn't fully wavered from her. She was in the periphery, on the edges of his attention – but still present in the cross-hairs. This man had asked her to call him Saxon –

_"__Or Master, if you'd like."_

"_I don't so I won't," _Clara had said.

"_You don't seem the sort of woman who can afford to have exceptions like that," _he'd fired back, which led to her comment, and his lying smile, and this sudden silence.

He was quite unlike any of her other clients, who had sought her out with all the air of nerves gone haywire, talking in furtive whispers behind newspapers, or in the shadows of parking lots and abandoned corners of restaurants. With Saxon – she refused to call him _Master_, never in a thousand years, never, not even on the point of pain would she utter such a ridiculous name – he had simply called her up as if they were old friends with a long overdue plan to have a drink. He asked her to pay him a visit at her "earliest possible convenience."

"_Or even earlier, if you value the simple miracle of breathing."_

"_Is that a threat?"_

"_No, Ms. Oswald, just a warning. And not from me, mind you. Just said by me."_

Clara couldn't see the difference, but she didn't bother to say this to him. She took down his address, hung up as he was still saying goodbye, and looked up what she could in relation to that address. _Iron Ease Industries _appeared in every search, which appeared to be a business firm that handled things of no particular definition that Clara could see, and with a record so clean it was blatantly scrubbed up by bribery and lord knows what else. Not that Clara could hold that against them. She killed for a living. That placed her at a significantly higher rung on the criminal ladder, and therefore much lower on the list of _People Most Qualified to Hold Grudges Against Lawbreakers_.

It wasn't the law that Clara was breaking – at least, that's what she liked to tell herself. God's law perhaps and sure, her work may not have been strictly _legal_, but she never took a job that she could not justify doing to herself in her most lonely, quiet, and dark moments. Regret was the very last companion Clara could ever want to have, and she would not let it haunt her the way her jobs and their success seemed to haunt the people who hired her to do them in the first place. It's why she kept throwing away her mobiles and changing the locks on her doors: the victims of regret just wouldn't stop crawling around, looking for her absolution.

As if Clara had any to give.

As if Clara was even the one _to _give it.

She spent the next few seconds of this silence, which Clara knew would break at any moment, for she could sense Saxon's patience wearing thin, comparing him once more to these clients of the past. They had all wanted to know if she could do what they wanted, without knowing the details of how, and they didn't want to see her again until it was finished. _Sometimes not even then. _There had been one such client whose only conversations with her were conducted entirely through a series of letters dropped off back and forth between her mailbox and his own. _Coded letters, at that. _Clara's head still hurt when she thought about having to decrypt each little message tucked in between bills and junk mail, only to have burn them in the ashtray afterwards, for safety's sake just as much as paranoia's. Such a waste. All that knowledge crammed into her brain and it was only to placate a man too cowardly to commit his own murder. _Or to even give his real name. John Smith – clearly fake. _Clara almost snorted as she thought about it.

"Something funny, Ms. Oswald?"

"No, Saxon." She gestured to the window behind him, the large sheer panes of glass with the faint tint. The sky was overcast and pale grey outside, like freshly mixed cement. No sun, but no hint of rain, either. "Finished enjoying the view? Because I'd like to leave."

Saxon pretended to look surprised by this. "So soon? But you only just arrived."

"I don't spend time with strange men who make threats on my life," Clara said plainly, with only the smallest hint of a smile. It wasn't a nice smile, but at least it was honest. _No lies here. _"Tell me what you want and be quick about it."

"Are you always so demanding?"

"Only when people are evasive."

Saxon chuckled at this, resting a finger against his temple with his thumb prodding into his chin as he studied her closely. Clara wondered how a man so young – surely he could not be older than his mid-thirties, thirty-seven at the absolute latest – could have grown so exasperating before reaching the midpoint of his life. It was either a cruel life, or he was just a cruel man.

_The latter, _Clara decided, glancing him over with keen intent. He had a round face and narrow, bright eyes that flashed like fire. Clara disliked his eyes as much as she hated that tight-lipped smile. _Reminds me of a snake. _He might have been handsome to another person, but he was far from Clara's type – and she would not have treated him any different had he been comely. She knew better. She had always known better. It had also earned her the name _frigid, ice princess, _among other things.

"I called you here for a favour, Ms. Oswald. Not for an argument."

_Call it whatever you like. _"And how may I help you, Saxon?" Clara cleared her throat and sat further back in the chair. It was a comfortable silver and black contraption, that sank just a little beneath her weight and was low enough to the ground that her feet didn't dangle pathetically, even with her spine pressed flat to the chair's back. Its one disadvantage was that she had to look _up _at Saxon, as if she were grovelling beneath him. She believed this was a deliberate choice.

"It's not _me _who needs the help. It's you. And I'm offering it."

_Why?_ But instead Clara heard herself asking, "How?" and she wondered how she could have made the mistake.

Saxon lowered his hands to the desk and pushed the papers on it closer to Clara. He added in a photograph extracted from a folder to his left, as well as a smaller photograph pulled from the folds of his wallet. Clara watched all these pieces fall in front of her, hiding her interest in his dramatic flare to allow only the tiniest of smirks to tug at the corner of her mouth. It didn't last long. She wondered if Saxon noticed.

"This man is an acquaintance of mine. Well, I say _acquaintance_. There's a bit of history there," Saxon said, chuckling to himself, amused by a secret Clara could not and did not care to understand. He continued. "Think of a brother, and then think of something much worse, and you've just about got him squared off."

"What's his name?"

Saxon said it. "But he prefers to go by Doctor."

_And what does this have to do with me staying alive? _Though he had phrased it oddly, Clara knew exactly how to untangle the hidden meaning of Saxon's parting remark on the phone. Everything alive valued the _simple miracle of breathing, _even if they took it for granted for nearly their entire lives – until the very end of them, in fact. "And is he?" she asked.

"Well he certainly knows how to _take care_ of people," Saxon mused, but there was that fire in his eye again, and the thin smile, and Clara knew she could not take what she was hearing at its surface value. "He has similar talents and hobbies as you do, Ms. Oswald, as well as the means of executing them."

"I'm not bothered by competition, and I'm not looking for a companion," Clara said, pulling one of the photographs over to her with the tip of her finger. She spun it around to face her properly. An older man – mid-fifties, if she had to guess. A handsome face beneath the lines and wrinkles, with bright, clear eyes, and close cropped grey hair that hinted at unrulier tendencies if left to grow out. _Not bad - easy on the eyes, if he fits your type. _But there was an air of the candid in this photograph that Clara did not enjoy – it was a man captured without knowing he was being watched, a private moment of a person's life not meant for any particular set of eyes, much less not for a camera's lens. She pushed the picture away from her and cast a quick eye over the papers. She saw an address listed at the top, as well as a bullet list of details that often accompanied tasks like this. When and where the Doctor could be found on most days of the week – _he stays close to home, a small blue house on 456 Gallifrey Road_. Nearest kin – _none, the lucky devil _– as well as the likelihood of his absence being noted and acted upon – _very low, almost sadly so._

Saxon's eyebrows darted up on his forehead, wrinkling it. "Did you think I was playing him up to get you interested? Drop that thought. Drop it now and kill it quick, Ms. Oswald."

"Then why...?" she began, only to have Saxon end it.

"Because he's out to kill you. Isn't that obvious?"

"And how do you know that?"

"Because I know him. I've known him all my life and I know he knows about you. And this man _is _bothered by competition, Ms. Oswald. Nor is he interested in seeking out a companion. That, at least, you both share."

"Then why tell me?" Clara asked again, not entirely satisfied with the answer Saxon was offering. "Why do you care? We're strangers, you and I; you're nothing to me."

"We don't always have to be."

"I'd prefer it if we were," Clara said.

"That was the start of an entirely innocent proposition," Saxon said, smirking at Clara. She saw a flash of his teeth then, and knew he was not playing her false. "If you would have let me finish."

Clara waved a hand and leaned forward in her chair. _By all means, _the gesture said.

"The Doctor worked for me on a strictly off the record, off the books, cloak and dagger sort of way, until a nasty little falling out a few weeks ago. Gone rogue, the old fool, and I can't very well have him wandering around knowing what he knows." Saxon studied Clara briefly for a few seconds before continuing. "You can have the position he left behind, should you want to fill it. For obvious reasons it has no title - call yourself whatever you like. You can continue doing what you do best for a living, so long as you go after who I tell you to. No more of this independent contracting business – it's far too risky, don't you think?" Saxon gazed at her with a curious expression, one that Clara found hard to place.

_Is he trying to convince me or convince himself? _She couldn't be sure. She would continue to be politely dubious.

"Surely you'd prefer such security?" he asked, almost insistent now.

"How did you find out about this?" Clara asked, moving to the other photograph Saxon had offered her, the smaller one he'd flung out of his wallet. This appeared to be a staged photograph, judging by the way this man called the Doctor smiled. _No teeth. _But she didn't get a sense that he was lying. His eyes looked far too bared for that. It was an unsettling gaze, one that screamed without a sound. Clara dropped the picture quickly, unwilling to look at it for long. "I can't imagine he called you up to have a nice little chat about who he wanted dead."

"No, this is strictly grapevine mutterings," Saxon said. "But they had a ring of truth to it and I could hardly stand idly by and let this come to pass without stepping in to prevent it. It would be a waste of a very fine life that could otherwise be properly utilized. You came very highly recommended."

"Oh? By who?" Clara chose to file away his other remarks for a later brooding session. _He talks about me like I'm a tool._

Saxon grinned, all his teeth bare now. "John Smith – all the Smiths, actually; I know there's been a few. Ms. Pond, who was grateful to get back both her daughter and the hand of the woman who abducted her. Do you always collect trophies? No? Hmm. Who else? A Noble, I believe. There may have been a Jones in there. You'd worked your magic for a certain Captain Harkness, but he could be charmed by anyone." Saxon rattled off the names with an ease that filled Clara with a cold spike of dread. She clenched her hands to hide the trembles in her fingers and moved back in her seat, putting a few more bits of distance between herself and Saxon. She recognized all of those names.

_That's nearly everyone this past year, _Clara thought, grateful that most of her panic emerged as an internal, ulcer-inducing emotion and very rarely showed itself on the surface. _He knows about all my work in the past year – but how?_

Saxon seemed to guess this would be the next question. "I've had my eye on you for some time, as a potential recruit. But I wasn't going to hire you without knowing your qualifications. I'm very good at finding out what I want to know about people I want to know about. You could say it's a calling, much like... whatever you want to call what _you _do."

_Murders and executions, mostly. An unfortunate necessity. Dirty business. _Clara shrugged, forcing herself to meet Saxon's eyes and smile without showing her teeth. _My turn to lie now. _"Anything else you wanted to tell me?" she asked.

"Not a thing," Saxon said, mimicking her shrug.

Clara gathered the papers and the photographs, tucking them neatly inside of her purse, careful not to open it wide enough and let him see the cane of mace she kept in there. She hadn't bothered to bring a knife or a gun to this meeting, doubting that it would get through security nor would it leave a good first impression. _Not that it matters, since before today I was sure he wanted to kill me. _Clara wasn't exactly convinced he _still _wouldn't, but she wasn't going to make up her mind then and there. She pushed herself to her feet.

Saxon followed her with his eyes, scowling deeply. "What's your answer?" he demanded.

Clara adjusted her hold on her purse and gave Saxon another quick smile, showing a hint of teeth. "I'll let you know later."

"I want to know now."

_I don't have an answer for you now. _"And I want to think it over. I'll call you before midnight." She backed away from his desk, before dredging up the reckless bravery necessary to turn on her heel and leave him with the sight of her back as she walked out of the room. Clara barely heard Saxon's secretary chirp out a farewell as she left, so intent was she to make it to the lift and back down to the lobby and out those doors into the cold, autumn air.

She was hardly breathing; her heart was in agony, throwing a fit inside her chest with every staggering beat. Someone wanted her dead. Someone wanted her dead._ Again. _And he stood a damn good chance of doing it, if he was as experienced as Saxon hinted.

The panic passed as the lift arrived in the lobby and delivered Clara unto the horde assembled there. Her face was cool and still, like a statue's cut from inimitable marble, masking thoughts impossible to know. Like the first picture she'd seen of the Doctor – but Clara didn't want to think about that.

* * *

It was at exactly 11:52 that Clara dialled Saxon's private line and said, "I'll do it, but I won't work for you." She hung up before he could respond, though as he had answered the phone with a gruff, "What?" Clara was sure that he'd not only known who was calling, he was also put out from having to wait for an answer.

Not that Clara felt any scrap of guilt about that. He was a pompous man, with a horrible penchant for lies drenched in would-be charm that did nothing but make Clara's skin crawl. _What sort of person calls themselves _Master? She wondered, easing herself into bed after having dropped her mobile onto her desk chair. Clara hesitated as she reached over to flick off the lamp switch. It suddenly felt like a better idea to leave it on.

Clara's arm darted back beneath the covers as she lay there staring at the wall, lost in her thoughts. _Probably the same sort of man who calls himself Doctor. _Clara repeated the name Saxon had given to her before revealing this second title. It wasn't a bad name. Strange. Possibly foreign, or perhaps just tremendously old-fashioned as to still contain its Latin roots. She would look it up tomorrow and see what turned up, purely for curiosity's sake. Clara had already decided she was going to kill him.

Not that she _needed_ a good justification for wanting to kill him, if what Saxon said was true. The Doctor was out to hurt her, and she would see that he didn't by making the first move. It was that simple. It was nothing short of basic survival – self-defence in the cloak of an offensive manoeuvre. It was a good enough defence, one that held up briefly to Clara's mental jury. Though it crumbled at the return of: _if what Saxon said was true._

Clara fell asleep before the verdict could return. Her dreams were full of nooses, thirteen steps, and solemn standing executioners who, when their masks were removed, all looked like the Doctor.

–

"She's coming."

"Who?"

"Ms. Oswald. Your cause of death – and she's quite the peach. There are much worse faces to have to look at while shuffling off this mortal coil, I'll tell you that much."

The Doctor scowled, running a hand over his tired eyes and the even heavier weight of his mouth, every part of him aching from the nightmare he'd left behind. "Who is this?" he asked, stifling a yawn by clenching his teeth.

"You really have to ask? A _friend_. The only friend you've got left now."

The man who wanted to be called the Doctor said something unpleasant and harsh that rhymed with the words "ducking" and "hunt."

The man who wanted to be called the Master laughed. "Did I ever mention that your foul mouth is the only redeeming trait you have left? Well, _one _of them. I could list a few more if you'd like. Feel free to ask."

"I don't so I won't," the Doctor half snarled, half sighed, and fully ready to throw the phone across the room. He hoped it would dent the wall, or at least mar the paint.

"You sound just like her," Saxon laughed again. "You two might get along if she weren't trying to kill you."

The Doctor doubted this, but he said nothing. "When?" he asked, but he had wanted to ask _Why_, because Saxon had not said anything to him in the past three weeks since he'd quit the job and sequestered himself at home.

"Not sure, but I can find out. I'll let you know more once I do."

"Why?" the Doctor asked, getting the word right this time.

"What's an old friend for?" Saxon said, but again the Doctor wasn't sure. He couldn't see Saxon's smile, and that was the best way to tell if the man was lying. _No teeth, no truth._

"We aren't friends, Saxon."

"No, but I'm all you have left in the world, and a peculiar situation like that requires a title. _Friend _is as good as any other, so why not use it?"

"You're tricking me," the Doctor said, staring at the ceiling, at the moth that was darting again and again into the lightbulb whose dark golden light was making the Doctor's eyes hurt. "I'm not coming back. I'm not working for you. I won't take orders anymore."

"Is _that _what you're telling yourself? You won't believe she's really after you until she's got a gun pointed to your face." Saxon laughed, either at the image this brought to mind or how stubborn the Doctor was being. _With good reason, _the Doctor told himself. But it felt too self-indulgent to be anything close to the truth. "I don't want you back, old man. But I don't want you dead, either. It would be a waste of a very fine life that could otherwise be properly utilized."

"I don't care," the Doctor said, watching the moth batter its wings against the light and fall in slow, frantic spirals before it rose back up again and darted once more towards the hot bulb. It was killing itself, the stupid thing. Couldn't it tell? Didn't it care? "I don't even fucking care."

"I'll be in touch," Saxon said. "You look after yourself now."

He hung up, and the Doctor let the phone fall into the folds of his sheets and blankets, already tangled in knots. It matched the landscape of his stomach.

_I don't care, _he said again, to himself this time. _Let her show up. Let her come._

Let it be his blood on someone else's hands for a change. Let them have to bear that guilt. He had enough of his own, and the burden was more than enough to bear.

* * *

The Doctor said this, yet when he got out of bed a few hours later and put on a pot of coffee – tea was not prepared to handle this level of silent brooding – he found himself filled with a familiar sensation that grew out of the knots of his stomach. It raced along every vein and nerve and curve of sinew, igniting him, electrifying him, astonishing him at how so much could be so alive all at once, and yet he could sit so calmly, breathe so evenly all throughout. That's how it was when he worked, both before and after Saxon hired him. That's how it was when he watched lights leave eyes and watched blood turn from a puddle to a smear to a congealing bit of dark, crimson skin on pavement and metal and sand.

He was preparing himself. Not for a fight, and not for defence – just for a necessary task that needed to be complete. Dirty business held together by dirty deeds.

He was preparing himself to survive.

The Doctor drank his coffee black and frowned at the acidic taste burning its way down his throat and into his gut, but he was well beyond the point of displeasure. Accepting such cold, stark truths always left him like this: unmoved, untouched, with a lined faced that seemed to be cut from stone, and unknown thoughts teeming beneath the surface. But there wasn't much to know. Or rather, there was only the one thought, and the Doctor had no one to share this with. No wife. No child. No in-laws. No companion of any kind.

It was a simple thought, really. He had no plans on dying of anything less than a natural cause or his own hand – and he was far too stubborn to be his own cause of death. _So let her come. Let her try to kill me. She probably hates me enough to think I deserve it. _He was almost eager to see how she'd try.

The Doctor was not in the habit of letting those who hated and sought to hurt him get what they wanted. He'd built an entire life around thwarting such things, had been running and never stopped running after his parents were killed, and his survival had painted a target on his skin that soon seeped into his very bones, making a comfortable, settled life seem absolutely unthinkable. And so the Doctor had lived by making sure those who didn't want this no longer drew breath – until Saxon came along and offered him all manner of illegal protection.

"_You don't have to stop what you're doing. Just broaden your horizons, that's all I ask."_

And so the Doctor believed him, because that's what you do when you trust someone who works hard to earn it, until the work became too much and he had enough of a reason and money saved up to live comfortably for the first time in his life. Even if "comfortably" could also be defined as "locked up inside his home with only brief dashes into the outside world." Saxon hadn't said anything about his resignation, and had said nothing else in the weeks that followed – except for one strange phone call, given a few days before last night's.

_"__Someone's got her eyes on you, Doctor. A nice wide set of big, brown eyes."_

_"__Beg your fucking pardon?"_

_"__Just passing along the message,"_ Saxon laughed, and hung up before he could elaborate and before the Doctor could demand that he did.

He finished his coffee and stared out the window through the yellowing lace curtains, peering up at the overcast sky. No hint of a sun, but no trace of rain, either. The sky was like the seal of a tomb closing over the freshly dead, but the Doctor had never felt more alive.

_Let her come,_ he thought, and he found himself smiling, though he couldn't understand why. _Let her try._

* * *

A week later, on the 8th of August at a little past seven o'clock at night, Clara did just that.


	2. Chapter 2

Clara had never felt out of her element or liable to make a mistake when it came to other tasks, other jobs that were unfortunate necessities, but such a reprieve wouldn't be felt now. She was sure of it. With the Doctor she felt as if a blind had been wrapped tightly over her eyes. Each hour that passed, no matter how she pored over what she had to do and how best to do it, felt no different than as if she raised a hand to grope through the dark, hoping nothing would bite – or lop her arm off.

She wasn't worried. She certainly wasn't ___scared. _Clara knew what she had to do, and it was a simple matter of seeing it through to the end. Risks and consequences were to be expected. ___There's always going to be danger. It's never completely safe. _But that wasn't the point.

"It's not about being safe," she said after the third night of deliberating, talking to herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. "It's about being___certain_." Her foam-flecked lips looked ridiculous, contrasting with her would-be wooden expression. Clara scowled at it, then stopped – that looked even sillier.

Who was she trying to convince? Clara spat out the toothpaste and rinsed out her mouth, taking long, cool sips from the tap. She was alone. She didn't have to defend herself against herself. She was alone – she should have her own back.

Perhaps she was a control-freak after all, but Clara much preferred to call it being ___practical._ There was absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make sure every little possible thing would go the way you wanted it to, nor was there a problem in preparing yourself for every possible deviation from that desire.

___... Right? _Her voice sounded suddenly lonely and hollow inside of her own head.

Clara dried her mouth with a hand-towel and looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. It was broken up into twelve differently shaped circles. If she let her eyes fall out of focus, she could see twelve distinct Claras staring back at her, with the same wooden, lax expression. The same eyes, large and brown and discerning. Twelve hers with twelve sets of eyes, with the same thoughts churning underneath: ___I might not know much about the Doctor, but I _do ___know he's after me. _She would just have to cling to this thought, as well as the small pile of evidence she was gathering to corroborate it.

As she shut off the bathroom light and walked on soft steps over to her bedroom, Clara eyed the damaged window at the front of her flat, pausing to gaze for a longer moment at the large silver X's of duct tape blocking the part where the glass had been shattered. She was still finding shards of glass on the floor days after the brick had been thrown through her window, startling her out of sleep with a loud scream. That would have been bad enough, and would have been a prank she could pass off on bored bastard neighbourhood kids – if her apartment's spare key weren't attached to the brick.

Clara had gotten the landlord to change the locks and to overlook the damaged window albeit begrudgingly, joining with him in the thought that this was a one-off, unfortunate situation. But Clara had been smiling thinly as she said it, her teeth hidden behind her quivering mouth, and her agreement had been nothing but a lie.

This wasn't a "one-off unfortunate situation." This was just one more in a series.

* * *

It started the morning after she called Saxon to confirm that she'd take the job. Clara couldn't allow herself to work under his thumb, no matter what manner of protection he offered to her – but she would take the job. That, at least, she would not compromise on.

The trouble was, gathering information to make the job easier wasn't proving to be that in the slightest. Any search on the name Saxon had given her in conjunction with the Doctor proved useless, revealing next to nothing that could be applied to the former employee of ___Iron Ease Industries_, as Saxon had described him. And of course looking up "the Doctor" was a futile effort, too.

There was an archived article on a site dedicated to cold cases about the murder of a couple matching the surname Saxon had said, but Clara couldn't see the connection there. ___No date, no picture... Next to useless, that. _Nothing to give her a specific time frame for the event, and as she highly doubted this Doctor would take the name of one of his victims, she had to assume the article was about a relative.

___And so what if it was? _Clara couldn't spare sympathy for the man that was harassing her as foreplay to his attempt at murder. Even if she thought forcibly, and then tried not to think with just as much fervor, of her own mother, dead these twelve years past. ___Dead. Killed. Murdered._

Clara shook her head, as if that would dislodge these thoughts. She couldn't think about that. She wouldn't.

Just as Clara had the thought to go down to the local library and dig up any old newspapers, hoping that ___something _would turn up connected to the name Saxon gave her, the mobile phone she'd moved to her desk began to light up and trill. Clara answered it, half distracted as she scrolled further down the cold case site's page.

"Yes?"

"Dave."

"Er, sorry?"

"Dave."

Clara frowned. "No, that's my – " she began, then caught herself. "Sorry, you have the wrong number."

"Clara Oswald," the voice on the other end of the phone said. It was male, and speaking in a hushed, rasped undertone. "Daughter of Dave Oswald. And Ellie, deceased."

Clara's hand shook as she held the phone to her ear. She thought of answering. She thought of cursing. She thought of waiting to see what the man said next.

She decided against all these, and simply hung up – but she shoved the phone in the back of her desk drawer and refused to answer its every following ring.

The only benefit the call provided was that it reminded Clara to check her email for any new messages from her father. There was only one. A brief, polite, but clearly concerned, "___Just checking in on you but not really checking in on you, I know you're an adult now_" message greeted Clara. She smiled with a sincerity that reach her heart, for the first time in what felt like years, as she read it over more than once. By the third read through, she had her reply ready.

___Dad -_

___Love that you're loving Cabo. Keep soaking up the sun for me, just enough for a freckle or two. Could live without the potential skin cancer or tumour. Same goes for you._

___Doing well here – same old same old, nothing special. When something new happens, you'll be the first to know. Can't keep you out of the loop for long._

She hesitated, drumming her fingers lightly over the keyboard, not hard enough to put in the actual words just yet. Clara chewed on the edge of her lip and pushed onwards.

___Been feeling all right? Had an odd dream about you the other night, and I'm not saying I'm superstitious but yes of course, I am absolutely superstitious._

___Keep in touch. Sorry I haven't._

___Love,_

___Clara_

She sent the message and pushed herself back from the desk – but didn't move from her house any further than that. Her desire to leave vanished as quickly as she had made the gesture to distance herself from the desk. And so she spent the rest of the day puttering around the same little stretch of rooms and halls, making tea when she was bored, sketching in the margins of last Sunday's newspaper, and waiting for her father to message her back.

That night, as she was filling in a crossword book she had picked up from a shop years ago and let collect dust at the back of her bookshelf, Clara heard a knock on her front door. Glancing at her watch let her know it was far too late for any amicable company, and as she had no one that would conceivably bother her this late at night – sober or otherwise – she felt more than happy to ignore the damn thing.

That is, until the knocks persisted into full-on, heavy fist banging. A dog from a flat further down began to bark, and on cue a baby started to howl.

Clara gritted her teeth and muttered under her breath as she kicked back the blankets and stomped with flat feet over to the door. She began to pull on the knob, only to realize all the locks were in place.

___Peephole, Oswald._ The silent remonstrance almost made her jump. Yes, of course. How could she be so stupid?

Clara darted up to the tops of her toes and shut an eye, pushing the open one against the small, bulbous glass. No one was at the door. But there was a small box set on the faded welcome mat, wrapped in red with a tartan bow and a note-card on a pale white string. Clara found this just as upsetting as the thought of someone actually being on the other side, waiting for her.

She examined the box from the distance of the peephole and her tiptoes. It was too small to be a bomb, that was for sure. What little she knew about such things indicated they at least had to be the size of a human hand, and this box was no larger than one that might contain a necklace, or a ring.

Clara's fingers fumbled on the latches and locks, but she made sure her breathing was even, steady. The baby had been silenced, but the dog was still barking, his howls echoing out into the night.

"Open it quickly. Grab the box. Slam it shut." She said this to herself more than once, taking in long, fortifying breaths through her nose. "Got that? Open. Grab. Slam."

And she did just that, with no problems besides her stuttering heart, and catching part of her hair in the door as she spun back around to shove it shut.

Back in bed, massaging her sore scalp, Clara tackled the gift box and set the bow and wrap to the side. The note-card caught her eye briefly. ___To Ms. Oswald, _it said. Which didn't raise any particular alarms in itself. What bothered her the most was the question of ___who_ could have dropped it off – her mind strayed briefly to old friends and flames, people whose faces had simply fallen out of her life and never resurfaced.

Clara shook her head. ___No. Couldn't be. _They'd have lingered around, hoping to get a conversation off her.

She thought of Saxon and then laughed. ___Ridiculous. Why would he bother?_

She thought of the Doctor and went very, very cold. ___Not likely. _But not impossible.

The box came apart neatly in Clara's hand. She was right – it was a jewellery box, all dark velvet inside and out, and smooth in her hand. She opened the lid and peered inside not at a ring (not that she was willing to admit she had been ___expecting_ a ring) but a doll's head. Plastic and painted and scuffed in a few places – and a perfect miniature replica of her own face.

True, there were a few variations of the details. The nose was too pointy, the eyes much more oval than they were in real life, and she could clearly see where someone had used a coloured marker to draw in brown where the eyes were once a pale, storm-sea blue. The hair, also plastic and attached to the heart-shaped little head, was curled at the edges in a series of elaborate ringlets last seen on a 1950s vixen, and the lips were dark red, plump. Clara wasn't sure this was how she'd recreate her features, if she were told to do it.

There was a piece of paper rolled up and tucked into the hole where the doll's head was meant to attach onto the rest of its body. Clara dug her nail into the opening and fished the paper out. The writing was spiky, slanted, and the ink had splattered around the words.

___"Don't lose your head over bad dreams, darling. Sleep well."_

Clara had never burned anything quicker in her life.

The incident with the brick and her spare key had happened in the evening after that, which only culminated in the decision to get the damn job over with already. Clara was nervous, yes. She was uncertain, of course – but she was angry. She was insulted. And she wasn't going to remain that way for long.

"If he thinks I'm going to break down over this, he's wrong. He's beyond wrong – he's an idiot." It felt comforting to say the words aloud, to give the inner conviction shape and sound and form. Clara went to bed for the first time since learning about the Doctor with her mind burning white hot, furious and vindicated.

She'd take him down screaming before he ever got a chance to try.

* * *

On the 5th of August, the Doctor got a peculiar phone call.

"Hello?" he answered, not entirely politely, as he expected it would be Saxon.

The voice – a woman's voice, speaking quietly – said his name. Then, "Or do you prefer ___Doctor_?"

The Doctor scowled. "Who are you?" he snapped.

"Just checking," the woman said, her voice a little louder now, all sweetness. "You have a nice day now, Doctor." And she hung up.

Any attempts to call her back ended in failure – ___beep beep beep! The number you have dialled is not taking calls at this time. Please try again._

He stared at the mobile held in a tense hand, his grip tight, the little bit of plastic creaking in his fingers. The Doctor was smiling. It was not a pleasant smile – all teeth and fierce honesty. It was the sort of smile that would have turned a destroying angel away.

It was the woman Saxon had warned him about. The Doctor was sure of it.

* * *

On the 6th of August, the Doctor heard a knock on his door.

No one was there when he answered it – just a package was left behind, small enough to rest on his palm. It was wrapped in dark brown paper, the kind he'd seen covering slabs of meat at the butcher's, and held together with twine. A rough, ugly sort of a gift, though he couldn't imagine why anyone would leave him one. No one in the world knew that the Doctor existed now, except for Saxon. He'd run out of enemies.

___And Ms. Oswald_.___Shouldn't forget about her._

No note-card was attached to the package, but his name – his ___real _name – was written across the top in large, block letters. ___To you, Doctor, _was written beneath it, in a neater, more refined script. He chose to overlook the ink splatters.

After setting the strange gift down on the kitchen table, the Doctor stared at it for a long while before deciding what to do with it.

"It's too small to hurt me," he reasoned, reaching out once again to open the wrappings and undo the twine. There was nothing to be afraid of from something that could be crushed inside his hand.

Inside the box was a wizened, wrinkled head torn off a puppet's body. Someone had taken the time to bleach the hair, streak it with grey, and trim it down short to resemble how the Doctor looked now. The eyes matched his own, and the eyebrows had been stencilled in to be thicker, also grey, slanted downward in a furrowed, ferocious scowl of disapproval.

A piece of paper was folded into neat, even squares and shoved inside the socket where the puppet's head was meant to meet the rest of its body. The Doctor tore it out with a butter knife loaned for the occasion.

___"A wise man once satirized, 'You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.' Personally, I think you ought to settle for just praying."_

The Doctor set the piece of paper down carefully on the kitchen table, next to the puppet's head. He threw away the box and the twine and the brown paper, pushing it down low among the peels and rinds and coffee grounds. His smile was thin, with a flash of pale, even teeth.

He wondered how to thank Ms. Oswald for her little gift.

–

On the night of the 7th of August, the Doctor woke up to hear the sound of glass shattering, and a stray cat spitting furiously. He grabbed the bat that he kept stowed away in the back of his closet and walked calmly towards the front of his house, as if there were nothing at all alarming about this situation. He even thought to whistle, then thought better of it.

Glass peppered the front carpet by the door, and when he looked up to see from where it had come, he noticed a little window towards the top of the door had been smashed through completely. From the moonlight filtering in the Doctor could see glass shards, golden and dark blue, scattered around the floor, along with a rock, strange and bulbous. Something was tied to it with a glimmering silver chain. He prodded the rock and the odd shape tied to it with the bat before reaching down to examine it closely.

It was the rest of the puppet's body. Pinned on the back of its black coat was a scrap of paper, jagged at the edges, clearly torn off a corner of the newspaper. The Doctor held it out so he could read it properly, moving closer to the silver beam of moonlight.

___"See you soon, Doctor. We've got an appointment."_

The Doctor put this new note and the puppet's body next to the first note and the head, left out on the kitchen table since the day before. He'd never seen a stranger or more grim collection. Nor had he ever smiled quite as broadly before.

"Well at least she's ___consistent_," he said, half-shrugging as he examined the gifts Ms. Oswald had presumably left for him. "A bit dramatic, but it's nice she thought to keep up with a theme." It showed a certain kind of care that the Doctor simply had to admire, even if he was the target of such malicious ire.

The Doctor whistled as he walked back into his bedroom, tapping the end of the baseball bat along the hall and the frame of the door. The tune was Gary Numan's ___An Alien Cure. _He even sang a few lines as he climbed back into his large, empty bed with the bone white sheets and the bone white pillows with their dark brown edge, like amber or rust or perhaps dried blood, if you were morbid enough.

"___So I moved like a rumour, like a glorious lie._" The Doctor turned on his side, then on his back, then onto the other side, sliding his hand under the pillow opposite the one that cushioned his head. The bed felt suddenly too large, and the room too vacant. He filled it up with his voice, speaking in an undertone. _"____And I walked into Heaven, into dead paradise._"

That night he dreamt he was talking to a woman who sat on the opposite side of a glass wall, with metal slats at mouth-height for their voices to leak through. Like when prisoners get visitors – but what side was he on? The Doctor couldn't tell. He couldn't see the woman's face, but she had a rounded chin and pale pink lips that smiled every time she spoke to him. A little dimple showed in the corner of her cheeks each time she did it – the sight thrilled him, pleased him. He found it almost too charming to endure.

The Doctor could see her teeth with every grin, and he knew she was telling the truth.

A pity he couldn't hear a single word.

* * *

On the 8th of August, at seven o'clock in the evening, the Doctor looked up from the book he was reading in his winged armchair. A noise from outside drew his attention out of the story, as did the sudden, deceptive silence that followed. He reached out for the bat resting against the side of the chair – always kept close at hand, his only companion these days – and cast the book aside.

He heard it again. A scratch, like nails clawing at the door.

The Doctor glanced at his front door, at the bit of duct tape he'd used to cover the broken window pane. He waited a full minute, counting the seconds inside the silence of his head, before striding over to the door and throwing it open wide.

Darkness greeted him, along with the distant hum of crickets.

The Doctor stepped forward – then stepped back, thinking better of it. But the movement had been enough. A long, black baton came arcing up from his left, catching him square across the bridge of his nose. He felt something crack, then felt the pain and blood gush forth, along with a torrent of curses. He was struck again, and age and pain and weakness and his own awful stupidity caught up with him as he stumbled, actually___stumbled_.

And then he was on his back, staring up at a lovely face bent over in curiosity. She had dimples on the edges of her mouth that creased her cheeks when she smiled. ___Like the dream, _he thought, stupidly.

"Hello, Doctor," the woman said. "So nice to meet you."

Clara reached down to shove her gloved fingers into the Doctor's mouth as she dragged him further into the house and out of the way of the door. She kicked it shut with the heel of her boot and, after pausing long enough to extract her fingers from his mouth, flicked and set all the locks in place.

Feeling the blood from his broken nose spilling down over his lips and into his mouth, the Doctor started to laugh. He couldn't be sure – his ears and head were ringing and pounding in a rapid, merciless succession – but for a moment he thought Clara was laughing with him.

As his vision began to pop with black and red dots, the Doctor heard a familiar voice crawl out from the back of his thickening thoughts._"____You two might get along if she weren't trying to kill you."_

The Doctor only stopped laughing at this when Clara pressed a little square of electrical tape over his mouth. She ran her thumb across it, sealing it on tight, and lingered close enough to peer into the Doctor's eyes. Was it uncertainty he saw flash in her wide gaze? Or was it merely the head injury playing tricks? The Doctor couldn't tell, and he was in no position to find out.

___Yet._


	3. Chapter 3

"Where do you wanna do this?" Clara bent her head to peer down at the Doctor, having stepped back to admire the rest of her handiwork at a safe enough distance. The silver tape she slapped to his mouth was likewise bound around his knobby wrists with the pale, greying hair – she almost smiled at that – and his ankles. He was so _thin_, tall and strung out and in clear, aching need of several nights' rest and several square meals.

Not that he was likely to get any. Poor thing. She almost felt sorry for him.

Clara straightened up and put her hands on her hips, examining the Doctor closely in a silence that matched his own. It didn't last long.

"Just because you can't talk doesn't mean you can't give hints," she pointed out. "Your last day on earth, I'm not averse to throwing out a few favours. Which room do you like best?"

Silence. Almost mutinous. Not even so much as a nod. He was gazing at her so intently that not even a blink got in the way. Clara ignored how this made her feel by saying it made her feel nothing.

"Bedroom?" Clara pointed in a vague direction down the nearest, slim corridor. It was as cheerless as the rest of the house, as far as Clara could see. White walls, white carpet. So stark and bare it was almost pitifully Spartan. "Living room? – Which I suppose is almost where we are now." Clara waited again, then jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Kitchen? Might be handy for the clean up, assuming you've got tiles in there."

The Doctor said nothing.

"Anything you want to add?" Clara unzipped her striped briefcase bag and took a peek at the instruments inside. Nothing too fancy. The mace was still there, as was the baton, a marvellously compact device, along with the Walther PPK. Forget diamonds as a girl's best friend, _this_ little beauty was Clara's go-to, foul-weather companion.

His silence persisted, but so did Clara. "I'm open for suggestions. Consider this the suggestion box." Clara gave the bag a little pat. "I'll pull ideas out and wait patiently to see what you can contribute back in, yeah?"

_Why isn't he struggling? s_he wondered with a frown. There had been the initial bits of flailing and discomfort when Clara struck him round the face, yes. And she felt her skin beneath the sleeves of her slim leather coat stinging, probably from where his nails had clawed at her as he stumbled backwards. But when Clara had subdued him long enough to get the tape round his ankles and wrists, there wasn't even a pathetic attempt made to free himself. The Doctor was being unnervingly compliant.

_Or just tricking me into thinking he is._

Clara sighed. "This isn't how I do things, you know." Clara pointed at the blood drying on his face... Then a thought took hold of her and she found herself wiping off the traces of it, grateful that her fingers were gloved. She rubbed the stains against the Doctor's shirt, a perfectly unremarkable dress shirt with opalescent, glimmering buttons. "The baton, the tape, the break in. I like things to be a bit more low-key, subdued. Distant."

The Doctor's eyebrows rose a fraction at this, an obvious expression of disbelief. Clara couldn't blame him, considering the first impression she'd left on him.

Clara moved her hand to brush down the Doctor's eyebrows. They were wiry, and rather out of place. _Still looks mad, _she thought, smiling a little. _Well, let him. He deserves to be. _"But with you I'll make the exception," she continued, moving her hand back and pushing herself up to her feet. "Serves you right for scaring me."

This time, the Doctor _did _react. A perfectly quizzical expression contorted his face, starting from the eyebrows she had just smoothed down and moving over to the part around his mouth that wasn't covered in tape. His look suggested he couldn't understand her – or was acting as if he didn't. Clara wasn't sure.

"Don't play dumb," she said. "And don't think for a second that I am, either. It's very unbecoming, and you know what they say about assumptions."

The Doctor continued to look at her as if she were speaking utter nonsense – worse still, as if he thought this nonsense was _amusing._ If his mouth weren't taped, he would have been laughing at her. Not a full-on laugh, belly deep and loud, but an impolite chuckle, a sneer that would show his teeth right down to the fillings she could so easily imagine in the back row of molars.

It was a thought that made Clara's blood freeze cold. _He's _laughing _at me. _As if all his morbid little gifts – the phone call, the doll's head, and the key – weren't enough to antagonize her. _Now he has to laugh at me._

"No need to be so cheery," Clara reminded him. She waved one of her hands at him, tempted to slap the side of his face, but knowing better than to give in to that emotional outburst. _Keep calm. Keep focused. Don't let him know he's got any leverage._ "I've got the winning hand here."

That earned a light snort and a half eye-roll.

Clara sighed. She reached down quickly, without thinking, without knowing why she bothered or why it mattered suddenly that she got to hear what this sneering, bleeding, supine but still somehow looming over her man sounded like. Her fingertips found the edge of the tape and she pulled it back hard, fast, the way a band-aid needs to come off: all at once, to get the pain over with.

He yelled, predictably so. Clara overlooked it. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted another reason to hit him again. But mostly she wanted to hear how she sounded – it was suddenly of vital importance.

_He'll sound just like he did on the phone_, Clara told herself. _That same gruff, low, rough voice. Like a rasp of skin catching on a nail. _ But she didn't quite accept this thought, no matter how often she repeated it to herself. Her brain couldn't make the final leap from suspicion to belief.

"Before we get started," Clara cut in – she almost couldn't help herself; the words were there on her tongue and threatening to spill, they simply _had _to go somewhere. And why not in his forcibly attentive ear? "There's just one thing I'd like to know."

"_Just_ the one?" he prompted, and she heard his voice clearly then: not gruff, not low, not rough at all, just clear and cool, like water crackling over ice in a glass. And distinctly Scottish, too.

Clara did not know how to feel, but her throat was tight and her cheeks were warm, and she suddenly could not bring herself to look at him. _That's not the voice. That's nothing like the voice on the phone. _But she persisted. "Why did you do it?"

"Context is an incredibly useful thing to have when being interrogated," the Doctor said.

She ignored this. Her own frustration made the words unravel further, spilling more than she knew she ever ought to share. _I'm not like this. I'm better than this. _But right now, she wasn't. "The phone call wasn't enough? What, did you hack my email or something to find out what I said to my dad? Not very nice, you know. I'd never bother with that. And then you had to send that doll's head, _then_ the note – _then_ break a window, on top of all that?" She found herself pulling at her nails, catching one of the edges and tearing it slowly, bit by bit, across the arch of her finger tip. "There's a difference between being thorough and being _histrionic_. Man your age should learn it."

Something in the Doctor's face shifted, drawing his expression into a sombre, dark pit that made Clara look away as soon she she glanced at it. _He's not the voice from the phone, and he doesn't know what I'm talking about_, a voice of panic went off on wild tangent inside Clara's head, shrieking loud enough that it almost drowned out his response.

"I quite agree."

Clara blinked. She studied him side-long. "Well. Good." But her heart was still uneasy, her hands still catching and clawing at each other.

The Doctor noticed this. His own hands – long fingered, bony, with the faintest dust of hair at the knuckles – were clasped as comfortably as one could make them, considering his bound position. "So I can't see why you'd bother going through all that trouble if that's how you feel," he said.

Clara blinked again. She gave a little shake of her head, a little toss of her hair, which was pulled back in a severe, nearly austere matron's bun. She had smoothed it down as much as she could to ensure not even a strand would get out of place, but there was no telling what might happen. _And yet somehow crime scene evidence is far down on the list of my concerns right now. _"What?" she asked blankly.

"Exactly my question."

_Breathe in. Breathe out. _Clara repeated the process as much as she needed until her focus returned. Her eyes fell to the Doctor's mouth – he kept his teeth clenched just faintly, and they were visible in little white flashes beneath his half-parted lips. That worried her. That thrilled her. _He's being honest. _But it didn't make her happy.

Clara settled down with her legs bent underneath her, and her hands poised on her knees. She leaned forwards, drawing herself close enough to make out the flecks of colour in his eyes, but still far enough away to avoid his arms, should he swing them up to strike. "Suppose you run start from the top, Doctor," Clara said, speaking as evenly as she wanted to seem. "And when you get to the end, stop."

"Is that an order?"

"A friendly suggestion."

Something in the Doctor's face twitched again at that, but she saw his mouth moving into a sarcastic little smirk. "We're not friends," he sneered.

Clara gave what he doled out right back. "We're not bound to be, either. Start talking."

It took him a moment, but he did. And when he was finished, Clara was already on her feet and turned, headed towards the kitchen to call his bluff. _He's lying. He has to be. He must be._

_He's not._

But her face was red, and her eyes were wide when they adjusted to the light and she saw on the table, like a little shrine on the black marble top, the four pieces of evidence that ruined everything. A puppet's head, a note, the puppet's body, and the rock tied to it.

It was the thumping noise that drew Clara out of her thoughts, each steady bang that removed her from the howl of panic and inner, silent confusion. She glanced over her shoulder and could have laughed to see the Doctor thrashing, having forced himself up to a seated position.

"You did a terrible job trussing me up, you know," he pointed out, nodding for emphasis at how easily he could reach his ankles and pull at the edges of the tape. They made an awful sound when torn.

Clara moved back over to the Doctor to stop him. It wasn't until she cut the last bit of tape free with the knife she'd left in her bag – within the Doctor's reach, though he'd made no move to grab it – did she realize she'd helped him instead.

"I suppose you ought to start talking now," the Doctor said, levelling Clara with his stare.

She nodded, and took in a quick breath.

The Doctor held up his hand. "In the bathroom."

"Sorry?"

"It wasn't one of your suggestions, but you said I could throw one in. So I am. The bathroom."

Clara paused, glancing him over quickly. A little bit of blood trickled down from his nose again, and she surveyed, as if for the first time, just the full extent of the damage she'd wrought upon his face. "Right. Right, of course."

She kept waiting for the blow to fall, for his hand to reach out to grab, to pull, to strike. But they had made it to the bathroom, and he had settled down along the brim of the tub with a long, weary sigh, but had yet to make a move towards Clara at all. It was enough to almost let her guard down.

"You can start talking now," the Doctor said, holding a wash cloth beneath the tap in the sink, soaking it with water so hot Clara could see the steam gushing off it in pale, white spirals.

So she talked. She talked until her throat was dry, and she had to cough and clear it a few times, but the words got out in the end. The Doctor was looking at her long before Clara was finished, and she returned his stare with a quick flash of a smirk, a little flat chuckle.

"And that's it," she said, folding her arms and leaning against the door frame. "I'm finished. The end."

"Saxon hired you?" the Doctor asked. "He's the one that contacted you first?"

_Is that all he got out of it? _"He did."

Clara watched as the Doctor first dabbed at the traces of blood staining his mouth and nose before he moved experimentally to the blossoming bruise that made the bridge of his nose a swollen, hideous thing. He hissed, he swore, and Clara felt a little stab of sympathy, as if the hurt were her own.

"Here, let me," she said, crossing into the room and holding out one hand to take the cloth away.

"Don't you think you've done enough?" he snapped.

"And I'm about to do some more. Give it."

The Doctor did not.

"It's not as if you're facing a mirror," Clara pointed out. "I've got a better view than you do right now."

The Doctor prodded at his nose, swore again, and let out a long, rattling breath. "Oh, I doubt that very much," he muttered, but as he closed his eyes he extended one of his hands and dropped the damp, half bloody cloth into Clara's outstretched palm. He waved it once, which Clara interpreted to mean, _Be my guest_.

She crouched down next to him and steadied one hand on the rim next to where he sat, careful to keep her arm far enough away so that it didn't graze him. With the other hand moving at a measured pace, Clara began to move the cloth ever so gently over the ghastly bruised skin. The split bit of flesh had stopped spouting blood but was no closer to sealing up, and Clara made a mental note to check for a plaster in the first aid kit when she was done. _After I find the kit,_ she added silently.

"Would it help if I apologised?" she asked, wondering why it mattered if she did.

"Apologies don't change a thing," he added. "They're meant to make you feel better, not the person you wound up hurting."

"That's a little pessimistic," Clara said. But it was all the argument she had against a statement that, for all its flat, graceless delivery, still had a ring of truth to it.

"Would you being sorry fix my nose?" the Doctor asked, opening his eyes and fixing her with a laser-like stare.

"No," she said, because it was the truth. It was a long, thin nose, and it came to a bit of a rounded point, reminding her of sculptures of famous men, ancient and withered long past the point of being dust. _And now it's broken. He'll have to set it eventually._ "But it might help improve your temper."

"Haven't got a temper," the Doctor said quickly. "This is righteous anger you're seeing."

Clara pulled her hand back and let the wash cloth, fully filthy by this time, fall to the tiled floor with a wet _plop_. "Does your righteous anger stop you from telling me where the first aid kit is?"

The Doctor chewed on this retort for a second, grinding his teeth as he thought. "Under the sink," he said finally.

Clara kept her eye on the Doctor as she repositioned herself to be able to reach the cabinet handle. She made a grab for the kit and began to rifle through it for the items she needed, always mindful to lift her eyes after a few seconds to make sure the Doctor was where she'd left him.

"It's all right, you know," he said, after she'd done this for the third time.

Clara looked up. "Sorry?"

"I said it's all right." The Doctor was almost smiling. The look made a small bend of his mouth, showing just enough teeth not to be a leer, and far more than to be thought of as a lie. He then waved his hand in a gesture towards his swollen, clearly broken nose, and the bruise that was spreading to encompass the bags beneath his eyes. "S'all right that you bludgeoned me half to death. Of course, that could be the head trauma talking. I might feel differently once the adrenaline wears off. But that's all right, too."

Clara counted how many times he assured her in that response. Once had been more than she expected – twice was almost gratuitous, difficult to believe. But three? _Third time's the charm? _"I had to," Clara heard herself saying. _I thought I had to_, was what she meant to say.

The Doctor seemed to have heard this. Or perhaps he could see a flash of it in her eyes, something like hesitation, which was not at all what she had ever wanted to enter into her heart. Much less on a job. Much less on _this _job – which was proving to be nothing more than a curious, vexing farce the longer it continued.

"You were tricked," the Doctor said, addressing the confusion in Clara's eyes. "We both were."

"Why?"

"Because that's what Saxon does." The Doctor clasped his knees with his hands and sat very still as Clara moved closer to him, lifting up the plaster, the hydrogen peroxide, and her free hand to show she meant no foul. "Go on, then. Get it over with," he grunted.

Clara couldn't help but smile at that. He was making for a model patient. "This'll feel funny," she said, pouring a bit of the hydrogen peroxide into its cap. She guessed it would be enough to coat the split skin at the bridge of his nose.

"I already feel funny."

"Tilt your head back a bit. And keep your mouth shut. Wouldn't want this on your tongue." Clara waited until he complied with the first command before she lifted the cap and upended it gently, in little dashes, over the wound on his nose. He didn't wince but Clara certainly did as she watched the way the liquid fizzled, popped, and became a foam around the torn skin.

"Can I open my mouth now?" he asked, clearly doing just that.

"No." Clara tapped two fingers beneath the Doctor's chin and forced his lips shut. "Now hush."

Clara peeled the plaster out of its wrap and pressed the pad against the wound, flattening her fingers on the little sticking legs, spreading them out over the bruise on his skin. She made sure her touch was feather light, barely enough for her to register that his skin was beneath her fingertips at all, but he still drew back with an obvious grimace.

"I barely touched you," Clara muttered, crumpling up the wrapper and aiming for the little basket next to the sink.

"Still felt you," the Doctor said, opening his eyes, which found Clara at once. "Thank you."

She couldn't quite say _you're welcome. _It didn't feel right to. "So why did Saxon trick us?" she asked, filing away the warmth in his voice, the light in his eyes that she hadn't expected to find, for a later day's contemplation. _That can wait 'til later, yeah? Focus, Clara. Priorities need to be sorted here._

"Because he could. Because he wants you under his thumb as much as he wants me in the ground. Perhaps you'd end up going the same way as me in the end. Pick whatever answer you like."

"Which one is true?"

"All of them are. They've each got the same high levels of probability, when a man like Saxon's involved. It all depends on whatever atrocity he's in the mood for."

Clara considered this carefully. It took her a little bit to realize the Doctor was looking at her just as thoroughly. "What?" she asked.

"Did he tell you who I am?" he asked, his voice low.

"He said a name," Clara said. Then she said what the name was.

The Doctor winced again. It came out as a barely perceptible tic in the corner of his eye, a tightening of his hands on his knees. "Right. You can forget about that, for starters. Stick to calling me the Doctor."

"As long as you call me Clara," she said, wondering if she should hold out her hand. The Doctor ended up making this decision for her by holding out his own and she took hold of it at once, giving it a firm, hearty shake. "This has got to be my weirdest hello, Doctor."

"Likewise, Clara."

They smiled at each other, eyes flashing, teeth bared. Then their hands pulled back as if a fire had been lit beneath the skin and were making cinders of every pore and vein and bone.

"So what now? What next?" she asked.

"What do you think?" the Doctor pushed his hands against his knees and rose in one fluid motion. Clara joined suit. "We get back at him. We get even."

"It's got to be different from what he did," Clara said at once, not leaving room for an argument in this discussion. "He thought he could be clever and trick us, try to work us up into a fine frenzy. That's not how we'll be. We'll have to be different. We'll have to be better."

She waited, half expecting him to say it wasn't a competition, half expecting him to say it wouldn't be wise or practical or even _acceptable_ to charge in, rage and weapons blazing, ready to cut Saxon down in every figurative and literal way brutality could concoct. She waited. And waited. And the reprimand never came.

"The best revenge is revenge, yeah?" the Doctor said, smiling. It was almost a laugh.

Clara was the one who laughed. "I like how you think," she said, turning to leave the bathroom. It suddenly felt too warm in there, and much too cramped.

"Save that for when the fog clears," he said, following behind her. She felt keenly aware of his eyes on her back, just as she was aware of her utter lack of fear. "I'm still under the influence of your baton."

* * *

If greeting a man she beat around the head with a stick, and then later nursed to something akin to passing health, was her weirdest hello, then Clara had her weirdest introductory conversation over a detailed planning of the _Iron Ease Industries _building.

She had her strangest sense of camaraderie, a real flash of what it meant to have an actual friend for the first time since she took up a life doing needful, unpleasant things, when they shared a cup of coffee around ten to five in the morning. Their eyes were bleary by then, and their attention wandered readily from their plans on how best to corner Saxon and get the job done with the best chances of not going down with him.

"I have no intention on letting him kill me," the Doctor said.

"With you there," Clara replied with a little nod of affirmation that made the Doctor pause and smile. "What?"

"Too stubborn to let anyone but your own self take you out?" he asked.

"Is that an actual question or a projection?"

"Bit of both," the Doctor mumbled, tilting his head as he thought it over.

"Then it takes one to know one. And that is both an answer as well as a deflection."

Clara knew that she was talking to the Doctor as easily as she had last spoken to a friend from years gone by, someone she had loved and let go of and tried not to think about, because it was distracting and pointless and an old regret that couldn't be fixed. It was odd to talk so freely to the man she had, until a few hours ago, had been planning to kill and let Saxon dispose of. But it wasn't unpleasant.

Clara didn't want to think about what it was – she hardly understood it for herself.

When they decided to call it a night and get a few hours sleep, and the Doctor offered her the bulk of his pillows – "not the bed, just the accessories, I'm no gentleman," – to help spruce up the rather poor sleeping accommodations she'd set up in his living room, Clara experienced her strangest bit of retribution. It came in the form of a bone-white pillow case, lined with rusted red trimmings. As the Doctor handed the pillows to her, he withheld one of them and bat it around her head in a ludicrous attempt to actually have an effect.

"D'you mind?" Clara asked, snatching the pillow out of his hand, but there was no anger in her voice.

"I don't," he said. "It's no baton, but it got the message across just as good."

"The best revenge is revenge?" she asked, fluffing up the pillow and flattening the strands of hair his plush-based assault had messed up. She settled into the couch, hiding her grin.

"That's the basic idea. Sleep well, Clara." And then the Doctor was off, whistling to himself as he walked back down the hall to his bed. She thought the recognised the tune.

Clara fell into dreams of watching stars burn and bleed and fade and return, all of this seen as she stood by the Doctor's side. The stars shone as bright and determined as ever, despite their earlier destruction. The same song the Doctor had been whistling followed her into her dreams. _Gary Numan. I Am Dust._

"_The machines screamed from moon to sun. We're here waiting for you, we're here waiting for you."_

"_We're yours."_

And when they had succeeded, miraculously, against all odds really, in cornering Saxon just as they planned, Clara had her strangest moment of pride when she struck him square in the face. It was just as she had done with the Doctor with her baton, the same graceful, long arc that hit its mark as a dancer finds their step.

And it certainly helped boost her pride to the Doctor laugh appreciatively.

"So it _does_ look as bad as it hurts," he said, beaming at her as if she'd won him a distinctly rare prize. "Do it again, if you don't mind. I don't think his nose is broken yet."

And Clara did, not only because he'd requested it, but to get Saxon to stop laughing.

* * *

Clara wasn't sure how they could make what they did to Saxon appear to be an accident, but she had her truest moment of gratitude when the Doctor looked her square in the eye when it was all over and he spoke to her in his calmest voice yet. She noted the way his face, bruised and battered though it was, seemed to look all the more handsome and bold despite its own wounds. The blood that was not his own flecked over his cheeks appeared less gruesome – now it was exhilarating. Clara knew she was just as messy, and wondered what he made of it.

"We'll each take a part, spread it 'round the city. If it's one thing you can find here it's an abundance of trash."

Clara smiled, showing her teeth. She watched the Doctor's eyes move to the dimples that always framed her grins, watched the way it softened him for a few, crucial seconds that warmed her heart for the first time in years. "Bit more couldn't hurt, yeah?"

"I like how you think, Clara."

"It's the adrenaline," she teased with a wink.

And when she called him at the end of the day – a long day it was, surely the most bizarre and important day in Clara's life so far – to tell him the job was finished, it was the Doctor's turn for a series of strange social cues. "You left your supplies here. In the bag? All those bits you were going to use to do me in. Still want them?"

"'Course I do," Clara answered promptly, climbing into her car. She paused, replaying that answer over. "Er, scratch that. Came out wrong. I want them, but not to use them."

"Changed your mind?"

"Seems that way, yeah."

"I don't think you should. I say keep 'em on hand. Never know when we'll need them next."

Clara pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at the device, hardly able to comprehend the words that were pouring out of it. She noted the plural right away, and wondered when he'd felt comfortable lumping them together. "What's that?" she asked.

The Doctor's voice was a grunt. "Bad signal where you are? I'd hate to shout but: I'm offering a proposition – a business proposal, if you'd like."

Clara drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and said nothing. She waited. "Listening," she said, after counting back from thirteen in her head.

"We could be partners."

Clara started the car. She checked her mirrors and balanced the phone on her shoulder as she lifted it up, holding it to her ear. She was hanging on every word.

"If you're up for it."

She eased her way into traffic and began the slow trek back where the Doctor lived. She had memorised the quickest ways to get there during her days of preparation, hardly knowing what use she would put them to in the end.

"Been going at it alone all my life, perhaps it's time for a change." He paused. Clara distinctly heard the sound of a kettle being banged around, and she marvelled that this proposition would be dire enough to warrant the use of tea. "So. Anything you want to add?"

"Like what?"

"A proper answer, for a start."

"I have no objection to the offer."

"Because otherwise I'll have to – oh. Well. Nice of you to come out with that sooner."

"Couldn't help it, Doctor. You're charming when you squirm."

"It wasn't squirming. It was talking."

"It was squirming, and it was very becoming. Pour me a cup, I'll be home soon."

And they hung up, not knowing that the other's motions were synchronised, not knowing that the other one was smiling – not knowing that the other felt more at peace than they had since their first successful kill.


End file.
